Jack's throat ached every time he tried to swallow. It was raw and inflamed and felt as if it had been rasped with burr file. He was in no mood for work, but of no mind to quit. Early in the morning he'd expanded the search and called in the dogs. The big Alsatians had hauled at their leashes, encouraged by the dog-handlers and by the unwashed school shirt that Neil Kennedy had worn the day before. Where the kids had played the previous night, the footprints were obscured by the tracks of boys and men from the search the night before. The late fall of snow in the evening had covered the scent and made it difficult for the big panting dogs. Their broad pads made crisp pug-marks in the virgin snow on the old railway lines as they quartered back and forth, trying to pick up the trail of the missing boy.
It was late in the morning, while Jack was drinking hot blackcurrant to ease his throat and going over the interview reports, trying to pick out some tiny fact from them that would help in the hunt for the baby-killer, when John McColl came stamping into the office. His feet left a trail of slushy droplets on the worn carpet.
"Got another body for you," he announced. He looked cold. "They've just fished a woman out of the river. Looks like a swimmer."
"Great," Jack said, his voice sounded hard and gritty. "Just what I need. Looks like the whole town wants to kill itself or get itself killed. Got a name?"
"Nothing so far. She's covered in all sorts of shite from the water. Nothing immediately visible. Looks to be in her forties. She was hanging over a mooring rope twenty feet out from the quayside, just up from the grain silo. Probably been there all night from the state she was in."
"Suspicious?"
"Doesn't look like it," John said, angling himself closer to the two-bar heater, still stamping his big feet.
"That'll make a change."
"Anything on the kid?"
"Nothing from the search last night. Christ John, we've had folk in every school and warnings in every paper telling folk to keep their kids in off the streets, and they never listen. Stupid woman sent her son out to play so she could watch television. We should lock the bitch up." Jack put down his cup, then grabbed it up again as his throat reacted to the violence of his speech. He went into a fit of coughing.
"Aye. maybe we should. But we'd have to lock up a thousand others. And I dare say she won't be feeling too happy this morning."
Jack waited until the coughing abated and took another sip of the warm juice, letting it trickle down over the raw patches on the lining of his throat.
"Oh, I suppose you're right. But it's a bloody tough lesson to learn. See if we can get another bulletin on the radio this afternoon, just to drive the message home. I don't want to see any kids out of doors after dark."
"You reckon we'll get away with a curfew?"
"It's not a curfew John. Just scare the shit out of the mothers."
"I don't reckon the Super will like it. He's getting a bit paranoid about the coverage."
"Only because we're still in the dark. Once we get results, he'll be elbowing folk out of the way to get in front of the cameras."
Jack started coughing again. John McColl looked over at him. "You should see the Doc about that. The last thing we need is you laid up. With the boss off, that would leave us at the tender mercies of Mr Cowie, and that..."
John's words trailed off as the door opened.
"Did I hear my name used in vain?" Ronald Cowie asked. He was tooled up in his best uniform, the buttons gleaming on his shoulder.
"Just saying I'm getting the paperwork ready for you on the body."
"Oh? Which one's that?"
"Seems they fished a woman from the river this morning," Jack said. "Suspected suicide. John's on it."
"I'd put that on the back burner. There's more important things to worry about. I've been out to lunch with the Provost and Councillor Graham. He's on the police committee. They're getting very concerned over our lack of progress. The Chief Constable is showing a similar concern. It was a source of great embarrassment that I had very little to tell them."
"That's because there is very little," Jack said. John shuffled from foot to foot, clearly wanting to be out of the crossfire, but unwilling to get between his two superiors on the way to the door.
"Yes. Quite. You don't seem to have made any progress. And in view of Mr McNicol's absence, I've a mind to take over the handling of this case. Personally."
Jack sat where he was, trying to keep his face straight. In peripheral vision, he saw John McColl's jaw drop.
"Anything to say?" Cowie asked, one eyebrow raised.
"No," Jack said. "But it could set us back a day or two. Mr McNicol's view was that I should have a few days more. There are some lines of inquiry we are following up, and in view of the Kennedy boy's disappearance I think it's only fair to suggest a press and radio warning to parents. No doubt you'll want to make that yourself."
He let that sink in, watching the obvious calculations going on behind the man's eyes. Jack decided to help him with the arithmetic.
"Naturally, the press will be keen to know what progress we are making, and we'll have to assure them that every effort will be made. As the man in charge, you can be sure of every assistance from me, of course."
John McColl turned his body towards the fire, but not quickly enough for Jack to miss the wide smile creasing his face.
Cowie coughed into his hand. His eyes swung right and left. Talking to reporters was fine and dandy, as long as there was capital to be made from it. But if the only news was no news, he certainly didn't want to be the one associated with police failure.
"No. I don't think that will be necessary. At this juncture," he said. It was all he could do to keep from spluttering. "I had already decided to give you another few days. But I have to warn you that you'd better come up with something. I'll review the situation as and when necessary. But believe me, I'll have no hesitation in taking control if there's no progress. None whatsoever."
"Understood," Jack said, nodding curtly. Cowie stared at him and Jack let it simmer for a moment before he added very softly: "Sir."
Again, his superior looked as if his face was about to explode. Jack couldn't have cared less. The man had tried to cut him down in front of John McColl, and he'd been forced to back down himself. He deserved all he got. As he watched the retreating figure, Jack thought back to something his father had told him when he was just starting at the police college:
"Remember, there's always some jumped up arse promoted beyond his capability. He's the one to watch, because he'll stand on you to keep his head above water. Never give him anything to hold on to."
Jack thought his old man's advice fitted this moment precisely. He knew he'd have to step carefully or Cowie would move in and take over, and that, he knew, would be the worst possible scenario.
"You haven't made a friend there," John McColl said, trying to keep the smile off his face.
"I don't make friends easily," Jack replied. "I've better things to worry about. Or worse."
He looked down at the papers on his desk, brown furrowed in thought. After a few moments he looked up, raised a hand to sweep back the comma of black hair that had fallen down over his brow.
"This woman in the river."
"Yes?"
"Dig a bit. Get me what you can, soon as you can."
"Sure. But I think it's just a suicide."
"Yes. So was Simpson, and we thought the Toner incident was a suicide too. But there was plenty more to them than met the eye. As of today, I want to hear about every death, when it happens, and the full works on each."
John McColl looked at him, both eyebrows raised. Jack could read his expression easily.
"Yes, I know. It sounds like clutching at straws and jumping at shadows. But we can't afford to miss anything. Since the Herkik killing, there's been something not right about this town. I don't believe Simpson was the only one there. I've a feeling there was a riot of a party that night. I'm trying to find someone who might have been in the vicinity. We've got a tenuous connection between Simpson and the Doyle baby. Another serious connection between Toner and the Campbell child."
"You think there's a link?"
"I'm coming round to that feeling, though I don't want it broadcast. Not yet." He stabbed at the thickening file with his finger.
"Now we have a boy missing. Think about it. He was last seen across at the stockyard on the other side of Station Street. The yard carries on as far as the railway bridge over the river. And today we fish a woman out on the same side five hundred yards downstream."
Jack spoke in short bursts, taking a break between them to ease the rasp in his throat. He took another sip of juice. It had gone cold, but it helped.
"We can't afford to overlook anything. I've got a hunch, nothing more, but the hairs on the back of my neck are beginning to crawl. The connections are only loose threads, but any correlation, anything at all, could be vital. That's why I want an ID on the woman toot-sweet. Match her prints with those from the Herkik place, Latta Court and Loch View, just in case."
"We're not looking for a woman, Chief," John stated. "That's for certain, not unless she's an east German shot-putter."
"Not directly. I agree with you on that. I just want to see where all the broken edges fit in. There's more going on in this town than anybody would believe, probably including me. I want to find out what was going on at the old woman's house, who was there, and why. And I want to know where they've been since."
"What about Toner?"
"He wasn't there. The prints have been run through. But he was up to something and he was covered in the Campbell kid's blood."
"Can I ask why you're so sure that the old woman's case has something to do with the others?"
"I'm not. That's the truth. I've just got a feeling about it. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it, but until I know for sure, I don't want to take anything for granted."
John nodded. He moved away from the heater. A faint smell of damp clothes and singed cloth followed him to the door.
"I'll get you a name for the swimmer, hopefully by the end of the day."
"I'd appreciate that," Jack said. His voice had gone hoarse. "Oh, and another thing. See if Sorley Fitzpatrick will lend us a Bronto today. The earlier the better."
"A what?"
"One of their snorkel trucks. They can lift a couple of men up to roof level. If he can't spare it, check with the lighting department."
"What for?"
"Yours is not to reason why, John," Jack said, but he said it with a smile, even though the speaking was beginning to make his throat really ache. "But I'll tell you." He motioned the Sergeant across to the wall where a large-scale map of Levenford covered most of the space.
He indicated the points marked by red pins.
"Herkik. Doyle. Toner."
"Yes?"
Four storeys. Ten storeys. Eleven storeys at least." Jack used his forefinger to punctuate each sentence.
"Whoever he is, he likes high places."
"But Shona Campbell was killed on the ground," John protested.
"Yes. I've been wondering about that. That's why I need the snorkel. I want the whole roof area of Barley Cobble gone over. We didn't find anything on the ground, and I just want to be sure. Can you fix it?"
"Sure. I'll get on to it right away."
John closed the door behind him and Jack stood, staring at the map for a few minutes. When he'd been speaking to McColl, something had sparked in his mind, a connection half formed, that had wriggled away even as he'd tried to grasp it.
"Must be working too hard," he said to himself. He swallowed and felt as if a marble had lodged in his throat. Jack put a hand under his jaw. The glands were swollen and tender and he knew they'd be grape-sized by nightfall. He took an immediate decision, crossed to his desk and picked up the phone. The woman at the health centre told him she'd squeeze him in just before five.
Jack went back to the map, trying to resurrect the elusive thought that had died before it had been properly conceived. It wouldn't come, so he gave up. Instead, he went back to the phone and requested a sub-aqua team from headquarters. He knew Cowie would hate that, because of the attention it would bring, not to mention the expense and the divers would hate it too, for the river, at this time of the year would be freezing, filthy and dangerous.
Some hours later, and several streets away, in the basement store-room of the old library on Strathleven Street, Lorna Breck sat hunched in a chair with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. In front of her, the words on a catalogue file swam in and out of focus, and she had to concentrate hard to keep her eyelids open. She was desperate for sleep yet terrified to give up being awake because of the dreams that shunted in horrific procession, nightmare locomotives roaring and screaming through the dark.
They were coming constantly now, visions, dreams, illusions, apparitions, hallucinations. Lorna did not know what to call them. Like the terrible vision that had attacked and invaded her on River Street when she'd looked into the grocer's window, they came, even in sleep, preceded by the flat, oily smell of tomcats and a juicy electrical hum in the bones of her head behind her ears. As always, even in her sleep, she'd be aware of the dizzy numbness that stole through her, making her feel leaden and strengthless.
She could not evade them, could not avoid them, until the fear grew so great she would wake up, finding herself sitting bolt upright with the bedclothes knotted around her, damp with her own sweat, and she'd be gasping for a breath of clean air, black images of creeping shadows and scuttering blackness dancing in front of her eyes.
As she sat, trying to focus on the wavering print, she debated what to do. Keith Conran, had taken her into his office and asked if anything was wrong. She'd shaken her head, telling him she had some sort of bug which she thought might work itself off. She wasn't ready to tell anybody about the things she saw in the night, and more frightening, in the daytime. He'd suggested she should go and see Doctor Bell, but she'd told him she didn't feel that bad. In fact she felt worse than she'd ever felt in her life, but she couldn't explain to a doctor why she felt that way.
Lorna propped herself up and rubbed her eyes. They were red and grittily sour. She'd been up since five in the morning, launched from sleep by an image so terrible she'd rolled over and retched helplessly and drily over the side of the bed, feeling the convulsions twist and jerk the muscles of her belly.
She'd known it was coming. She'd sensed it and smelled it and heard the sizzling hum in her head and the cold lethargy had stolen into her muscles in a creeping paralysis and then, with a bewildering wrench she was flipped out of a dream from childhood where she'd been picking brambles with her mother on a clear autumn day and slammed into darkness.
The cat smell faded and another scent, dry and musky and slightly rancid came drifting over her. Birds. It was the smell of birds, like chickens, cooped up in an old timber shed. She remembered that smell from childhood and the days when she'd be out every morning for the eggs, shooing the fluttering birds from their boxes and rummaging in the half-light among the musty straw and feathers and half-dried droppings. Similar, but not the same, maybe another type of bird. The air also held the odour of dry-rot. She was in a high place, looking down from an odd angle. She did not know where it was.
Off to the left, in a dark corner, dim shafts of light speared through holes - in the wall? the roof? - and showed a thick mist oozing creepily like grey searching fingers round oddly slanted beams. Something moaned nearby, off to the left. Close to the sound, something fluttered, a grey ghost in the grey swirl.
Pigeons, Lorna realised. Already she was in the grip of the dream and her heart was beginning to churn as the apprehension mounted. The thought of the pigeons, moaning and burbling in the dark, was somehow enormously frightening, though she did not know why. The place she was in was cold and dark, criss-crossed by the thick, mouldering beams.
Off in the distance, far below, she heard a squeak, mouse-like in the dark, then a creak, as if a door had been opened. A small silence followed, filling the hollows, then another sound, a woman's voice, muffled by the distance. A higher response, unintelligible, but obviously a question, a child's tones.
The apprehension changed, expanded and became fear. Lorna could not move. She could not speak and inside the numbness that gripped her muscles, she could feel nerves jitter and jump, screaming out with her own need to scream a warning. It was a child. Another child.
Her mind yammered. Getawaygetaway. GO!.
Down below, there was another murmur and a second high response. Footsteps on broken glass, hollow treads on old stairs. More voices, the child's hesitant sounds getting closer.
Up the stairs and please hurry. This time the woman's voice, rising in urgency, came clearly. At least the words were clear, but in Lorna's ears, there was an odd double phasing sound, a strange harshness underneath the words. It was as if someone else had spoken at the same time. The words rang up the deep stairwell towards her, reverberating from the peeling walls. Lorna's heart kicked twice. The echoes seemed to separate the woman's words from the underlying sound, and Lorna heard the other voice, a deep guttural sound that was as much a snarl as anything, but was still able to form words.
Her heart kicked again then seemed to stop dead in her chest. Lorna gasped for air, but could not catch her breath.
Down below, the child said something. There was another sound, like someone choking, a burbling, liquid tearing sound. Inside her head, but seeming to come from a great distance, she heard the scrapy whisper, almost unintelligible, jagged with threat, and her mind recoiled.
From her vantage point high in the rafters, Lorna saw the gloom of the stairwell instantly become black as night. Something slammed against a wall and all light was blotted out.
There was a sudden thumping sound, a series of raps, like someone knocking on the wall, followed by a savage slavering growl and a small cry of surprise and fright. Right on its heels came a scream of pain and terror, ricocheting up, soaring higher and higher until it was almost beyond the range of hearing, before it was abruptly cut off.
Lorna's eyes were still wide and her mouth wider as she panicked for air. Down below, the blackness expanded, billowing up towards her and the liquid snarl grew louder. She couldn't move. The shadow rocketed upwards, jerking from wall to wall in a series of lurching zig-zags, incredibly fast, appallingly menacing. It spurted up the stairwell, a rippling piece of pure night, until it reached the lower cross beams. Something small tumbled within the blackness. She heard the crack as the small thing smacked against the bar with the sound of a green twig breaking. A foul, foetid stink assailed her and even in the dream she would have gagged if she'd been able to breathe. As the darkness drew towards her, pistoning from one perch to the other, she sensed the terrible wrongness of it. Behind her, the pigeons huddling together for warmth in the tight space where the roof beams slanted down to the wall, exploded in a panic of fluttering. The black thing scuttered past her and over the stench she got a hot metal whiff of blood. Something shot out from the moving shape and a bird detonated in a whirling puff of feathers and blood. Another came tumbling through the air towards her and hit the rafter with a dead thud. The dark shape turned towards her. It had no definition, but it emanated force and badness and dreadful power. It sucked away all the faint light, like a living black hole. Even though she could not see its shape, she knew it had turned to face her, as she had in the other dream on top of the building. Two eyes flicked open, yellow-orange and poisonous as before, huge, protruberant, alien, and utterly repugnant eyes, as blinkless as a snake. They turned towards her, malignant and engulfing and looked right into her. She felt the touch of that glance scrape across her like a bane, and in that touch she felt the derision of baleful glee.
The hunched shape sat there, glaring its malice, its breath a gurgling rattle, then it moved slowly. The limp thing that hung from it swung up and in the light of those poison eyes, she saw what it held.
The little boy's head lolled. There was blood on his nose and his cheek. Something dark dripped from his neck to splatter on the beam where the thing crouched. A white feather tumbled lazily in the air and settled on a splash where it stuck, trembling. The boy's legs hung downwards, one of them queerly twisted. He had one black shoe on one small foot. The other wore only a sock which had been almost pulled off.
The shape shifted, rippled and held the broken child out towards her, as if making an offering, a hunter displaying his kill. The orange eyes expanded and Lorna was filled with a shivering sick loathing. She tried to back away, but she was hemmed in by one of the angled beams and her foot slipped from the timber. The thing turned, moving like oil, rippling its way across the roof-void in a series of undulations, so fast it was hard to follow. At the far end of the space, grey mist was billowing in through rectangular gap in the gable wall. The thing flicked towards it, an impossible outline in the miasma, then it was gone. Lorna started to fall. She twisted and the stairwell opened up to swallow her. She plummetted downwards, unable to scream and the hard stone floor at the bottom raced up as if to catch her half-way. Just before she hit she had an image of her broken and bloodied body lying unfound during the depths of winter.
And then she woke up, lungs screaming for breath, so scared, so dreadfully overwhelmed with fear that her whole body was trembling like a tuning fork. Then the nausea had thrown her to the edge of her bed and her stomach had tried to turn itself inside out, as if it could void her of the nightmare image by voiding itself. Nothing had come out except a trickle of sour bile.
Now, in the silent basement of the library, Lorna still felt sick, from lack of sleep, from the numb horror of the constant dreams, and from the dreadful fear of what the dreams were showing her. She shifted in her seat and brought her hands up to her eyes and knuckled both of them, trying to wipe away the sourness under her lids and failing. She bent to the figures on the register, making an effort to concentrate, and failing at that too.
The stacked storeroom was almost silent. Keith Conran had been working on the catalogues earlier in the afternoon, but he had gone upstairs to the adult section for the monthly meeting. In another hour, the schools would be coming out and the first trickle of youngsters, less now that the nights were dark so early and because of the warnings the police had spread throughout the classes, would come clattering down the old stone steps to hand in their books and have them stamped.
The old radiator on the wall, a heavy, cast-iron ribbed monstrosity pinged and gurgled to itself as the antique heating system pumped water that was not quite warm enough through the maze of pipes that fed down through the ceiling. The faint hum of cars and lorries passing on Strathleven Street occasionally punctuated the wheeze of the heating system. On the far wall, the old clock with its fat black hands ticked sonorously, one second at a time, a sound that was so pervasive and so constant that Lorna had ceased to hear it. Apart from these sounds and Lorna's own light breathing, the basement was quiet.
She shook her head, feeling the short waves of chestnut hair feather lightly against her cheeks, and drew her eyes down the list, trying to match the delivery invoices against the books which had been ordered months before from the catalogues. It was far from easy. The words wriggled and wavered on the paper as she made the effort to focus tired eyes and tried to ward off the memory of the dreams. It was proving almost impossible, but she stuck with it, doing her best to concentrate. It was the only thing that kept the images at bay. She worked on for half an hour, making heavy weather of a routine job which should have taken minutes.
The seconds ticked by, like slowly dripping water, counted by the old wooden clock. It was half past three in the afternoon and outside a heavy dusk was gathering under low clouds when Lorna suddenly came completely awake.
Her head came up with a jerk and her eyes flicked wide open. She felt her breath catch in her throat. A pulse tapped just under the curve of her jaw.
The voice came again. A faint gurgling rattle.
The girl stiffened. She could feel the fine hairs on the back of her neck creep in unison. Her skin felt tight and tingly.
"Who's there?" she called out softly. Her eyes were fixed on the gloomy corner at the far end of the racks where the heating pipes angled up the wall towards the roof. The faint sound had come from there and as soon as it had impinged on her consciousness, Lorna heard the rattling breath of the black thing in her dreams.
The sound came again, a little louder than before. Lorna shoved herself back from the desk, fighting off the paralysis of instant fright, eyes taking in the distance between the desk and the door on the opposite side of the stacks. She had her back to the one wall and would have to squeeze past the old storage heater to come round the front and get to the heavy door which hung slightly ajar on its brass hinges.
The sound came again, this time louder and a palpable sense of presence locked into Lorna's perception. There was someone in the shadows. Some thing in the gloom at the far end of the narrow passage between the shelves and the dirty wall. She felt her hands shake as adrenalin kicked into her bloodstream, knotting her stomach and making every outline stand out in sharp definition.
Just then,the old clock clicked on the half hour and a harsh grinding noise of rusty gears and springs jarred the air.
Lorna's throat closed with an audible click and she started back at the sound. The clock had never made a sound before, apart from the monotonous tick. It was as if it had chosen that precise moment to come awake.
The girl pushed herself back against the chair. The fine hairs on her arms were now standing erect and the skin below them was puckered into gooseflesh.
From down in the shadows, the guttural rattle sounded like an animal in a den.
The clock chimed once and Lorna almost screamed. It was a low, flat note that hung in the air for what seemed like seconds. It was only the chime of an old wooden clock, but the sound, an ordinary, almost commonplace sound (although she had never heard the clock chime before) filled her with an intense and inexplicable terror. The rubber grommets on the chair-legs juddered as they scraped against the vinyl floor squares, caught, and the seat toppled backwards. Hysteria fought for control as Lorna forced herself past the heater, feeling the seam of her jeans catch on the rough edge of the table. She crossed in front of the stack of books when the door creaked loudly and slowly swung shut. The latch clicked home. Lorna stopped, frozen in the act of taking a step. Behind her ears, hot blood wheezed under increased pressure. Her throat clicked again as she gasped drily for air.
Then the light dimmed. It happened so smoothly that at first nothing seemed to be happening, then the bulb underneath the old green shade seemed to bleed power away. The yellow light dopplered down through orange to blood red in a sliding graduation. It took less than two seconds, while Lorna's mind was still trying to take in the enormous fact of the door slowly closing by itself.
In those two seconds, gloom engulfed the basement.
On the ceiling, the filament of the bare bulb was still clearly visible, a red worm dangling in the dark, throwing off a weak effulgence.
Lorna hiccupped. It made a strange little noise in the thick air. Her legs felt as if they would give way under her flopping weight and that thought was what made her manage to keep her feet. The idea of lying down here in the dark, behind the closed door, with something lying in wait in the now pitch-black corner was enough to kick another jolt of adrenalin into her shaking muscles, giving them just enough strength to stop her from sinking in a daze to the hard floor.
Her hand found the desk and her nails scrabbled on the wooden surface as she instinctively sought for purchase. The opaque glass of the door let in a wan glow from the outer office. It seemed a million miles away to the frozen girl who stood, terror-stricken, mouth slackly agape, holding on to the desk for balance.
Off to the left, where the shadows jostled at the end of the stacks, came another noise. This time it was not a rattle or a growl, but a whimper. Lorna turned, eyes wide, and in the act of turning, the narrow space between shelves and wall spun in her vision, suddenly wheeling in a spiral. Vertigo flooded her with sick nausea. For an instant, she could not feel her feet on the floor. The looping sensation of falling lurched in her belly and then Lorna was looking down into a black hole.
The darkness was absolute for several stretched out seconds, then Lorna saw shape, and when she did, her heart scudded against her ribs.
The boy she had seen in her dream was looking up at her. His eyes were rolled up so far that she could only make out the whites. There was a black splash on one cheek and a terrible gash on the other. Something poked through the skin, peeling it back in wet scraps. Even in her terror, Lorna felt herself lean forward, over the black pit, trying to make out what she was seeing. Something clicked inside her head and the thing sprang into focus. The little boy was dangling from a curved spike which had pierced the flesh under his jaw and come out through the side of his face. He was suspended in the pit like an animal in a butcher's shop, mouth forced into a wide gape by the drag of his own weight.
For another long second, Lorna was frozen by the horror of what she was seeing. Beside the small boy, other shapes, even smaller, dangled in the shaft, pathetic forlorn and limp. She tried to drag her eyes away but could not make them negate what she was seeing.
Then the boy's white eyes rolled down in their sockets. There was an audible creak as his head turned two inches to the right so that he was looking directly at her.
"Elf ee, ".
She heard the high strangled sound which gasped from the boy's twisted mouth as it worked to form speech. The words were unintelligible, but Lorna knew what they were saying.
"..op it." An incoherent, yet eloquent appeal from a small dead boy impaled and dangling in a black pit.
Help me! Stop it!
The sense was unmistakeable. In the midst of her fear, Lorna was swamped with pity for the thin little thing and those helpless dead things beside it. In the dark, despite the vertigo, she felt herself take a step towards the pallid face which was looking up at her, holding her with its dead eyes.
Then she heard the feral growl come rattling up from the depths. Beyond and below the dangling figures, she sensed movement, eager furtive motion in the black depths. Something was powering up towards her. She sensed it with every cell in her body. The thing was coming up the well, moving with that blurred speed. Her eyes widened and in the distance, two yellow eyes flicked open and glared, expanding like headlamps as they soared up to her.
Lorna snapped back from the edge. Panic burst inside her. Her throat unlocked and she screamed so loudly the glass panel on the door vibrated in sympathy. As soon as she screamed, the lights abruptly came back on. Without conscious thought, Lorna sprang to the door. Behind her, though the pit had popped out of existence when the light flicked on, she could hear the scrabble of nails on stone and the heavy, stuttered breathing of the thing in her nightmares. The muscles down the length of her backbone twisted and shrank in anticipation of a black, clawed hand reaching out to grab and rend. She made it to the door. The handle slipped, twisted, caught and opened. She threw herself out into the other room. A dark shape came looming in front of her and Lorna shrieked again. Two hands came up and grabbed her by both shoulders. She felt herself turn as enormous fear erupted and everything started to fade as her nerves finally gave up the fight. The blood drained from her head and Lorna collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
Five minutes later, she gradually came dizzily awake sitting in Keith Conran's comfortable swivel seat. The librarian was patting her face with a damp cloth. Beside him, Nelly Coyle, who was in her late fifties and ran the reference section, clucked and fluttered like a mother hen. They gave Lorna a Hedex tablet and a drink of cold water, and a while later, though she maintained she was feeling fine (which was as far from the truth as Lorna could imagine) Keith insisted on driving her round to the health centre. Between himself and Nelly, they suspected that she might be pregnant, although neither mentioned their view. Lorna wouldn't hear of her boss waiting until the receptionist could fit her in and he left her seated, pale and shivering, in the waiting room where she had nothing to do but think about what she had seen in the darkness of the library basement.
In the other waiting room, Jack Fallon was flicking through a tattered copy of Readers Digest, trying with difficulty to swallow, and wondering who on earth was interested in what somebody's spleen did.